Conspiring to Destroy the World

Our military--the Pentagon--is full of overgrown boys, people who have not gotten over a childish fascination with blowing things up. If you look at any showing of the hardware (and, I guess, also software) developed or being developed by or for the military, you can't help but be struck by this. (The 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, I think, very nicely shows the mindset of military people.) When (as, I suppose, it always is) the objective of these new toys is to kill people, they euphemistically call it "neutralizing personnel."

Unfortunately, these overgrown boys continually hunger for bigger and better (i.e, more deadly) toys. We are now in an era where their toys could spell the end of the world.

There was a time when the widespread use of nuclear weapons was predicted to cause a "nuclear winter" that would mean the death of all plant and animal life on earth. Apparently that view was called into question; but the bottom line is that no one knows for sure what would happen. Should we err on the side of caution and not risk nuclear winter or even nuclear autumn?

It’s not only the "brass," the big generals in the Pentagon. Every person in the armed forces, every soldier or sailor, who is part of the apparatus that would launch nuclear weapons, is a potential co-conspirator in the possible extinction of mankind. And, as well, all the scientists and engineers whose occupation is developing and manufacturing the horrors of massive death and destruction.

Further to My May 27, 2012 Posting, "Some Anti-War Thoughts on Memorial Day"

I just read something interesting. This guy writes,

I think half of us understand firsthand the caring that is at the heart of the U.S. military, but for others of us who are not part of the tradition, we just look from a distance and don't quite get it.

An interesting and provocative idea. I felt the finger was pointing to me as one of those who don't "get it," and that maybe I should re-examine my thinking on the subject.

Well, I feel that I might do so, at least to the degree of making a distinction between the "grunts" on the one hand and the generals (whom I still hate heartily) on the other.

My first-hand experience of the military consists of having been a cadet in Basic ROTC while in college. (I had to take ROTC. I was attending a land-grant college, and two years—that is, "basic" ROTC—was compulsory, though I tried to get out of it. I did manage to graduate with one-half credit hour less of ROTC than was required; it's a long story, how I managed that.)

I chose Air Force ROTC out of the choice of Army, Air Force, and Navy, simply because Air Force ROTC cadets did not drill with a rifle—and I didn't want to touch a gun, even a mock one.

In the late Spring, when the weather might be quite warm, we Air Force cadets had to drill in our heavy wool winter uniforms—the only ones we had—and it was not uncommon for a cadet to collapse from heat on the drill field. So much for "caring" on the part of the higher-ups.

I don't think I would personally like very many military people or veterans. Statistics show that veterans (and, even more so, veterans' organizations) are politically conservative and they vote Republican. And I believe they are consistently hawkish and they love war. They get together to share nostalgic recollections of the good old days of bombing the shit out of tens of thousands of civilians. (I know, that's harsh.)

Even if the lower-ranking personnel are deserving of my sympathy, I think maybe I can draw a parallel with the Catholic Church. I have a friend who is a former Roman Catholic priest. We don't talk very much about his having been a priest and not at all about his leaving the priesthood; it probably had to do with his being gay.

But he has been telling me that it's the Church hierarchy—bishops and so forth—who are conservative and opposed to a lot of social changes both within and without the Church; and—again according to my friend—even the rank-and-file priests are critical of the position of the bishops and the Church hierarchy, and at least in their hearts oppose those conservative forces in their church.

So maybe it's similar with the military: maybe there is a wide chasm between the higher officers and the men in the lower ranks.

My most popular (in terms of number of pageviews) posting on this blog has been the one I titled "The Military Dehumanizes People," posted on May 25, 2009. And I stand by every word of what I said there.

Update: Expanded on June 10, 2012.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

Some Anti-War Thoughts on Memorial Day

I don't like Memorial Day. I hate all things military and to me, nationalistic holidays like that glorify people who are trained to be killers.

We call them heroes, speak of them as defending their country, and say that they sacrifice themselves.

Why do people enlist in the military? (Since the US has had no military draft, everyone who enters the service does so voluntarily, and I devote some thought to why they do so.) First, I'm pretty sure that no one who enlists in the armed services does so expecting to be harmed in any way. It's kind of like smoking: no one believes that he or she will develop lung cancer as the result of smoking. These things always happen to the other guy: This seems to be a chronic tendency in human thinking. I don't know whether it's optimism, denial. . . .

Furthermore, I am going to espouse the undoubtedly very unpopular idea that people who enlist in the military services are misguided. If they think they are doing a duty or otherwise a benefit for their country, I believe they have been misled--at least arguably so and/or sometimes. And sometimes they are just trying to be macho. (Can anyone deny that the Marines—the whole aura or mystique of the Marines—is other than machismo?)

Okay. let's examine recent US wars. If you look at Iraq, over the years since the US's second invasion of Iraq, it's become more and more clear that there was little or no justification for it. We were told that Saddam Hussein, then the ruler of Iraq, was developing "weapons of mass destruction" (and thus adding that term to our vocabulary); and that turned out to be incorrect. (I won't go into whether the mistake was well intentioned or a deliberate lie; it's evidently a complex question.)

More recently it's come to light that there was no discussion of whether to attack Iraq in the White House. Evidently it was a foregone conclusion. It looks as though (then president) George W. Bush wanted a war and no one was going to even argue with him.

It's always the politicians and military leaders who make the wars; and the young men—the common soldiers—who have to suffer. Not to mention innocent civilians who get killed (more about this later).

Now, the Afghanistan war. If the syllogism is as follows:

• The United States was attacked on its own soil (9/11, that infamous day/event)
• Al Quaida planned and organized the attack
• There are important, or even main, al Quaida groups in Afghanistan
• Therefore: for US security, and to prevent another such attack, we must try to wipe out al Quaida bases and personnel in Afghanistan

If, as I say, this is the rationale, then maybe US actions in Afghanistan have some reasonable rationale. On the other hand, a few thoughts, all of which probably have the tendency of showing that US objectives in Afghanistan are impossible to attain:

• The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan before the US, was there for a number of years, and finally pulled out, more or less in frustration--perhaps very much like the experience of the French in Indo-China (later Viet Nam), who were there before the US and withdrew in failure. In our hubris, we did not learn from the French experience in Viet Nam and we did not learn from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
• Afghanistan has a very weak and corrupt central government (which we are implicitly and materially backing and trying to prop up). A lot of the country is in the hands of war lords who gain their power from growing opium. The US has even armed some of these war lords—and, any efforts made (and I don't know if there have in fact been many or even any) to suppress the opium supply have not made much of a difference.
• This is more or less a guerrilla war. Again we have not learned from the experience of Viet Nam. That was a guerrilla war and–though nobody wants to very bluntly say so—we lost that one.
• Not to mention that the US presence in Afghanistan looks like American imperialism, just as the Soviets being there was Soviet imperialism. I don't recall that the Afghans invited us.
  

Okay, now back to war in general and high-ranking military officers. When the Soviet Union was collapsing, Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts at reform--which involved permitting the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a whole series of events including allowing the satellite countries to break away and the Berlin Wall to fall—had to be done in defiance of so-called hard-line military leaders. And what I would call "right" ideas and events and progress must always be done in defiance of military leaders. Whether they are on one side or on the other, these are people whose profession is war and they tend to like and want wars. Our Pentagon is full of grown-up boys who must have their toys; and their toys are ever-more destructive weapons capable of killing more and more people, more and more easily, more and more impersonally. (In the "progress" of our civilization we keep getting further and further away from the situation where your enemy had to be killed more or less face-to-face.)

Aside from the sacrifice that soldiers make—which means to them not only the end of their lives but grief to families and other loved ones, loss of childrens' fathers—I don't need to enumerate what has been said so eloquently, so often—think about the lot of civilians in modern wars. Again—ever since the advent of aerial bombing—we have moved "beyond" (I hate to use a word which might imply positive progress) war which involves only soldiers. As one example: In World War II, in March and again in May of 1945, Allied bombers rained incendiary bombs on Tokyo. One-quarter of Tokyo was burned and upwards of 1 million (estimates go as high as 1,200,000) people lost their homes and tens or hundreds of thousands were killed.

These were not soldiers. These were not politicians. These were not the people who had made the war. It's impossible to know how many of them did or did not favor the war that was going on; but there is no doubt that they suffered. Imagine just one woman grieving over the loss of a father, a child, a sister—and multiply that scene a hundred thousand times. (And, by the way--to get back to Afghanistan--we've been killing civilians in Afghanistan. Not calculated to gain good will toward the US in the Islamic world--apart from the inherent evil and human tragedy of it.)

I don't want to argue here the question of whether the US had to fight in World War II. Whether Germany and/or Japan had to be "stopped." But even, if you take that as a given, I think that quite another question to think about is the morality of raining incendiary bombs down on civilian populations. Or atomic bombs.

I think that some WWII airmen regret their role in what occurred. It's clear that many do not. And that may be due to how, in time of war, we brainwash soldiers and civilians alike with a dehumanizing, demonizing view of the enemy. (I've talked about this before.)

Update.
Additions made May 27 and May 28, 2012.

Update, May 31, 2012
I don't want to imply for a moment that I don't have any feeling for our soldiers. It is very saddening to me when one is lost. And it makes me, if anything, even sadder to think about those who come home scarred or maimed, physically or psychologically--all the more so because I'm not totally convinced that these tragedies are necessary.


Copyright © 2012

Let's Ban Air Shows

News reports coming in yesterday concern an air show. At an air show in Reno, a plane crashed into the stands and killed the pilot and two spectators and injured more than 50. (These numbers, I'm sure, will change with newer reports.)

This is only the latest air show where there has been an accident. I think air shows are totally indefensible. They're dangerous. This from the Wikipedia entry "Air shows": " Air shows present some risk to spectators and aviators. Accidents occur, sometimes with a large loss of life, such as the 1988 disaster at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and the 2002 air show crash at Lviv, Ukraine."

The Huffington Post says, in an article on this most recent crash, "The Reno Gazette-Journal reported that prior to Friday's crash, 17 people had been killed at the air races since their start 1964." This same article quotes a witness at the scene: "'I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn't believe it. I'm talking an arm, a leg,' Higgins said 'The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore.'"

They certainly consume a lot of fuel and cause air pollution (and noise). But that's certainly a far, far smaller concern than loss of human life.

The military—Air Force, Navy—supplies many of the planes and pilots used in air shows. The Navy maintains stunt fliers who go around from air show to air show. So air shows actually are a big recruiting tool for the armed services, and that's why they foster them and enable them.

To make the shows thrilling to audiences, the planes perform dangerous manoeuvres. To quote Wikipedia again, "A skilled pilot will be able to climb vertically, perform very tight turns, tumble his aircraft end-over-end and perform manoeuvres during loops." And about the military aircraft used in air shows, Wikipedia says, "The display will usually demonstrate the aircraft's very short (and often very loud) takeoff rolls, fast speeds, slow approach speeds, as well as their ability to quickly make tight turns, to climb quickly, and their ability to be precisely controlled at a large range of speeds." That's why people like them (just as the audiences for car races may possibly actually hope to witness an accident).

Chicago, where I live, has an annual "Air and Water Show." It's very popular. People love air shows and maybe on the face of it that's sufficient raison d'etre. But I think it may be time to take a hard look at risk-versus-benefit.

Update, September 20, 2011
As of yesterday, 10 people had died in the Reno accident. The count of the injured now stands at "more than 60." And there's been another air show crash, in West Virginia.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The Military Dehumanizes People

When people enter the military and undergo training, what is one of the first things they are taught? It's called drill. Every person must march in coordination: perfect synchrony, lock-step. Like machines. It seems to me that, if you want machines, you start with machines.

The human identity must be submerged into the whole. (Any Star Trek fans out there remember the Borg?) But that goes against the very nature of what it is to be human: every human being is unique, an individual.

Also, there is the military's insistence on unquestioning obedience to authority. Again, do not think for yourself, do not be a human being, be something mechanical, a machine within a larger machine.

I saw an interesting little video clip not long ago about a robot being developed for the military. Of course it's the ultimate weapon: it won't know fear, it can't be "killed" by chemical or biological weapons, etc. This is what the military has been aiming for for thousands of years: instead of turning humans into machines, we can use real machines to begin with. Think of all the training that will be saved.

Update, December 21, 2012
Scientific fact has a way of imitating science fiction. We have drone airplanes and probably one day the drones of Army A will fight the drones of Army B. And, as I wrote, one day there will probably be drone or android soldiers; think of Star Wars.

Further thought, added November 27, 2013.
The trend toward developing machines to fight our wars brings to mind a clever comic strip of the Seventies called Pogo. To paraphrase Pogo, If you want better machines, you start with machines. I guess the boys in the Pentagon, with their lethal "toys for big boys," recognize this.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein